Emergency Response,

Early Recovery & Resilience

Joe Buffone, Deputy Emergency Services Commissioner

• Complexity of emergency response • Transition to recovery • Resilience in practice

Overview

• Climate understanding • Awareness of risk • Changing risk • Changing populations

Environmental challenges

• Ageing infrastructure • Planning Cascade effects: • Drought to storm, storm to

flood, flood to heatwave, heatwave to bushfire

• Earthquake to tsunami to nuclear disaster

Environmental challenges

• Command & control • Coordination • Processes & common

language • Information vs intelligence • Technology

Organisational challenges

Intelligence Cycle

Two-way information

• From the ground to

the control centre for analysis

• From the community • From the media • Back out to operations • Back out to community • Back out to media

• Tools to track events,

media, public info, social media in real time

• Quality assurance • Intelligence and

incoming information • VicFloods – 300,000+ • QLDFloods – millions

Real-time monitoring

Earthquake Tweets

• Recovery starts when

response starts • Change in operational

tempo • Needs analysis & rapid

impact assessment • Partnerships

Transition to recovery

• Critical infrastructure • Housing and immediate

needs • Lessons learned VBRRA

Transition to recovery

Community resilience

• Built-in preparedness • Built-in, advanced,

integrated planning • The built-environment • Resilience is

Information

Communication/Information

What EM needs from engineers

Knowledge needs: 1. Climate change

benchmarks 2. All hazards risk

assessment 3. Natural processes 4. Social, economic

vulnerability assessment

Connecting engineers

• Technical expertise • Deployable • The built-environment

Culture Change

• EM culture is changing nationally

• Are you part of the EM

system? How could you be?

• Break down barriers, and

move forward together

COMMUNITY

Exercise information flows • Exercising with the

community • Exercising information

overload • Exercise and stress test

systems • Exercising strategic

decision making timeframes and impacts